Unknown County GaArchives Biographies.....Battle, Cullen 1785 - living in 1874
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Joy Fisher http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00001.html#0000031 February 5, 2005, 8:15 pm

Author: J. H. Campbell

DR. CULLEN BATTLE.

  The name of Dr. Cullen Battle is entitled to a place in this record of Georgia
Baptists. Though for a number of years a citizen of another State, and not a
minister of the gospel, yet his long residence in Georgia, and his prominent
connection with the early movements of the denomination, his liberal support of
our institutions and his unabated interest in all our enterprises, identify him
closely with the Baptists of this Commonwealth.

  Dr. Battle was born in Edgecombe county, North Carolina, March llth, 1785. An
old family record furnishes the following information of his ancestry: About the
year 1700, William Battle emigrated from England to Virginia. Like most of the
English settlers in that famed old commonwealth, he was a member of the Church
of England. His son Elisha, however, married and removed to Edgecombe, North
Carolina, and became a Baptist. He was a man of great strength of character and
piety, and exerted an extensive influence. The youngest of his six sons was
Dempsey, the father of the subject of this sketch. Dempsey Battle had three
sons, Cullen, Andrews and John. The two elder were educated as physicians, the
youngest was killed by an accident. Cullen Battle received his medical education
at the University of Pennsylvania, and was an enthusiastic disciple of the
eminent physician and patriot Benjamin Hush. After several years of successful
practice in his native State, he retired from the profession to prosecute his
constantly increasing agricultural interests.

  He was twice married: first to Miss Elizabeth, sister of his cousin, James S.
Battle, who survived the marriage but twenty months; and secondly to Miss Jane
Lamon, of Wake county, who has been spared to be a life-long companion. Dr.
Battle removed from North Carolina to Powelton, Hancock county, Georgia, in
1818. There he professed faith in the Saviour and was baptized in 1827 by the
great and good Jesse Mercer, his wife having been baptized three years before by
the same minister. In Powelton he took a deep interest in the cause of Christ,
became at once an active and useful church member, leading in every good work,
serving faithfully in the office of deacon, and being, in every place, an
example of Christian integrity, activity, fidelity and liberality. His large
means enabled him to exercise a generous hospitality, and his house was ever
open to friend and stranger. When a traveling minister chanced to pass through
Powelton—and the village in those days was on the highway of travel—he went
directly to the-house of brother Battle, where he was sure to find a warm
welcome and comfortable home. Dr. Battle was an enthusiastic friend of
education. He was prominently identified with the management and control of the
fine academies for which Powelton, in those early days, was famous; and Mercer
University never had a warmer or more generous friend! He stands next to Mercer
himself, on the list of contributors to this noble institution. He was also ever
an ardent friend and contributor to the missionary cause, the Bible cause, the
Sunday-school cause, the temperance cause, and the cause of evangelizing
the-slave population in our midst. Though an unshaken believer in the scriptural
and moral rightfulness of the "peculiar institution," he always held it to be
the duty of masters to give to ,their slaves the bread of life. His own very
large family of blacks never lacked for the ministration of the word, and when
no regular preacher was at .hand, he would himself proclaim, with earnestness
and power, the everlasting gospel. If ever a master did the full measure of his
duty as a Christian instructor to his slaves, that man was Cullen Battle. For
years and years, it was his custom to gather the blacks of the community
together on every Sabbath afternoon and teach them the truth as it is in Jesus.
His instructions combined the soundest evangelism with the highest lessons of
morality for their daily lives and their intercourse with each other.

  He was never in favor of restraining them from acquiring the rudiments of
education. The writer has often heard him denounce the laws and the public
sentiment which forbade them to learn to read and write. Indeed, it is well
known that these restrictions were forced upon the Southern people by the
fanatical course pursued by the abolitionists of the North, and but for this
ill-advised interference, no prohibitory statutes of this kind would ever have
been found in our Codes.

  Dr. Battle removed from Powelton to Eufaula, (then Irwinton,) Alabama, in the
year 1836. At this time the Creek Indians had not left Alabama, and often gave
much trouble to the early settlers. Dr. Battle did not escape the misfortunes
incident to a home among these savages. More than once, by the sudden incursions
of these treacherous foes, his property was destroyed and crops abandoned. But
his characteristic energy, under heaven, triumphed over obstacles and reverses,
and his affairs prospered.

  Soon after reaching Eufaula, he became anxious to see a church established in
that young but growing place. In company with the lamented General Reuben C.
Shorter and others, a church was constituted in 1838, and by the active efforts
of these brethren, under the blessing of God, it became a power in the
community. Having been blessed with the ministry of Tryon, Pattison, Matthews,
Henderson, McIntosh, Van Hoose, Reeves, Wharton and Kinnebrew, it has grown to
be one of the largest and most influential churches in Alabama. And yet we
hazard nothing in saying, that to no human instrument is more of its solid
prosperity due than to deacon Cullen Battle.

  In 1853 he removed to Tuskegee, Alabama, where he again became conspicuous for
Christian enterprise and benevolence. He was one of the chief contributors to
the East Alabama Female College, which for so many years dispensed the benefits
of education to the daughters of Alabama. He aided also, to a large extent, in
the erection of the beautiful and costly house of worship in that town. Here, as
in Eufaula and Powelton, he seemed to feel a special responsibility for the
religious culture of the blacks, and scarcely a Sunday afternoon passed by that
did not find him actively engaged in teaching them the scriptures.

  Every good cause commended itself at once to his liberality. In the
subscription books of the agencies of every branch of Christian benevolence, his
name was often inscribed with amounts annexed, testifying to the largeness of
his heart and the profuseness of his benefactions.

  But war and desolation came on, and his old age has been saddened by the
privations that have been his lot since the close of hostilities. His immense
estate has been scattered to the winds, and his chief regret is that he can no
longer contribute to those objects which formerly claimed not only his heart but
his purse, But his deeds are not forgotten. His works of faith and labors of
love have already produced harvests of blessing, and are treasured in the book
of remembrance. Yet he claims no merit for these, believing that he only did
what it was his duty to do, and that, after all, he is but an unprofitable servant.

  Dr. Battle has just passed his eighty-ninth birthday, and, happy in the
companionship of the devoted partner of his bosom, in the society of his only
daughter, with whom he is now living in Eufaula, and in the hope of a blessed
immortality through the merits of a crucified and risen Saviour, he is
tranquilly passing the days that yet remain to him on earth, awaiting the
summons to join the hosts that have already crossed the flood, in the glorious
city of our God. Like a shock of corn fully ripe, he is ready to be gathered to
the garner of the skies.

  Dr. Battle has three children living, viz: Mary J. Shorter, (widow of that
noble statesman, jurist and Christian, ex-Governor John Gill Shorter,) Rev.
Archibald J. Battle, D. D., the present President of Mercer University, and
Major-General Cullen A. Battle, ex-officer of the Confederate States Army. A
promising son, Junius Kincaid Battle, died at the age of twenty-one, a year
after his marriage.

  Dr. Andrews Battle, next younger brother of the subject of our sketch, died in
LaGrange, Georgia, in 1842. He was noted for his modest piety and Christian
integrity—a saint-like man, beloved of all who knew him.


Additional Comments:
From:

GEORGIA BAPTISTS: HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL
BY
J. H. CAMPBELL,
PERRY, GEORGIA.


MACON, GA.: J. W. BURKE & COMPANY. 1874.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by
J. H. CAMPBELL,
In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.


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